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California is one of those states which has passed legislation in 1999 demanding lower nurse-to-patient ratios in its hospitals. The last phase of the legislation went into effect on January 1, 2008.
In many CA hospitals the ratio is down to as low as five nurses per patient, especially in the cardiac and special care units. It can go even lower if only there were enough qualified nurses available.
The intended positive impact of the law is obvious. When nurses work with a smaller number of patients and are not required to put in inhumanly long working hours, there is less burnout. And less burnout means both lower turnover rates for the nurses and a higher level of medical care for the patients.
The 1999 law triggered a boom in nurse recruitment which still continues in California today, as documented by Melissa Evans in her excellent Daily Breeze story.
Little Company of Mary, for example, has spent $10 million since 2004 to hire new nurses.
Torrance Memorial Hospital hired 340 nurses since 2003, 140 of them in 2006 and 2007.
County Harbor-UCLA Medical Center near Torrance, California, hired 350 nurses since 2005.
Kaiser Permanente South Bay Medical Center in Harbor City also recruited hundreds of nurses since the legislation.
But all that effort has only jacked up the demand for new nurses. The shortage became more acute with the retirement of a whole cohort of experienced RNs. The average age of a nurse in the United States went up from 44 to 47 within the last few years. By the year 2030, in the State of California alone, there will be need for 89,000 nurses.
Currently CA hospitals are 11,000 nurses short of the levels mandated by the law. The hospitals on the average run at a 10 to 15% nurse vacancy rate.
This of course creates an excellent opportunity for travel nurses. A recent report found that California hospitals hired 4,000 traveling nurses in 2006 alone.
